Divisions of the art of Oratory, § 1-3. Various opinions respecting them, 4, 5. Cicero's not always the same, 6, 7. Opinions of some Greek writers, 8, 9. Of the order of the division or parts, 10. Whether they should be called parts, or works, or elements, 11. 1. The whole art of oratory, as the most and greatest writers have taught, consists of five parts: invention, arrangement, expression, memory, and delivery or action (the last is designated by either of these terms). But every speech, by which any purpose is expressed, must of necessity consist of both matter and words; 2. and, if it is short and included in one sentence, it may perhaps call for no further consideration. But a speech of greater length requires attention to a greater number of particulars, for it is not only of consequence what we say and how we say it, but also where we say it; there is need therefore also for arrangement. But we cannot say everything that our subject demands, nor everything in its proper place, without the assistance of memory, which will accordingly constitute a fourth part. 3. And a delivery which is unbecoming either as to voice or gesture, vitiates and almost renders ineffectual all those other requisites of eloquence. To delivery therefore must necessarily be assigned the fifth place. 4. Nor are some writers, among whom is Albutius to be regarded, who admit only the first three parts, because memory, they say, and delivery (on which we shall give directions in the proper place), come from nature, not from art. Thracymachus, however, was of the same opinion as far as concerns delivery. 5. To these some have added a sixth part, by subjoining judgment to invention, as it is our first business to invent, and then to judge. For my part, I do not consider that he who has not judged has invented, for a person is not said to have invented contradictory or foolish arguments, or such as are of equal value to himself and his adversary, but not to have avoided them. 6. Cicero, indeed, in his Rhetorica, has included judgment under invention, but to me, judgment appears to be so mingled with the first three parts (for there can neither be arrangement nor expression without it), that I think even delivery greatly indebted to it. 7. This I would the more boldly affirm, as Cicero, in his Partitiones Oratoriae, arrives at the same five divisions of which I have just spoken, for after first dividing oratory into two parts, invention and expression, he has put matter and arrangement under invention, and words and delivery under expression, and has then made memory a fifth part, having a common influence on all the rest, and being, as it were, the guardian of them. He also says, in his books De Oratore, that eloquence consists of five divisions, and the opinions expressed in these books, as they were written at a later period, may be regarded as more settled. 8. Those authors appear to me to have been not less desirous to introduce something new, who have added order after having previously specified arrangement, as if arrangement were anything else than the disposition of things in the best possible order. Dion has specified only invention and arrangement, but has made each of them of two kinds, relating to matter and to words, so that expression may be included under invention, and delivery under arrangement, to which parts a fifth, memory, must be added. The followers of Theodorus, for the most part, distinguish invention into two sorts, referring to matter and expression, and then add the three other parts. 9. Hermagoras puts judgment, division, order, and whatever relates to expression, under economy, which, being a Greek term, taken from the care of domestic affairs and used in reference to this subject metaphorically, has no Latin equivalent. 10. There is also a question about the following point, namely, that, in settling the order of the parts, some have put memory after invention, some after arrangement. To me the fourth place seems most suitable for it, for we must not only retain in mind what we have imagined, in order to arrange it, and what we have arranged in order to express it, but we must also commit to memory what we have comprised in words, since it is in the memory that everything that enters into the composition of a speech is deposited. 11. There have been also many writers inclined to think that these divisions should not be called parts of the art of oratory but duties of the orator, as it is the business of the orator to invent, arrange, express, etc. 12. But if we coincide in this opinion, we shall leave nothing to art, for to speak well is the duty of the orator, yet skill in speaking well constitutes the art of oratory, or as others express their notions, it is the duty of the orator to persuade, yet the power of persuading lies in his art. Thus to invent arguments and arrange them are the duties of the orator, yet invention and arrangement may be thought peculiar parts of the art of oratory. 13. It is a point, too, about which many have disputed, whether these are parts of the art of oratory or works of it, or (as Athenaeus thinks) elements of it, which the Greeks call στοιχεῖα (stoicheia). But no one can properly call them elements, for in that case, they will be merely first principles, as water, or fire, or matter, or indivisible atoms, are called the elements of the world; nor can they justly be named works, as they are not performed by others, but perform something themselves. 14. They are therefore parts, for as oratory consists of them and as a whole consists of parts, it is impossible that those things of which the whole is composed can be anything else but parts of that whole. Those who have called them works appear to me to have been moved by this consideration, that they did not like, in making the other division of oratory, to adopt the same term, for the parts of oratory, they said, were the panegyrical, the deliberative, and the judicial. 15. But if these are parts, they are parts of the matter rather than the art, for in each of them is included the whole of oratory, since no one of them can dispense with invention, arrangement, expression, memory, and delivery. Some, therefore, have thought it better to say that there are three kinds of oratory, but those whom Cicero has followed have given the most reasonable opinion, namely, that there are three kinds of subjects for oratory.
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